


deep in the cell of my heart i will feel so glad to go

by bringyouhometoo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:58:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bringyouhometoo/pseuds/bringyouhometoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy Pond finds him in words, as she thinks the Doctor always knew she would. Spoilers for The Angels Take Manhattan; unashamed fix-it fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	deep in the cell of my heart i will feel so glad to go

**Author's Note:**

> Also, I should warn for mentions or insinuations of character death, but nothing quite happens in-story.

_A_ my signs the papers and they register for food stamps and a place to live and a right to work, and when they sign they sign as Williams, Mr and Mrs, because this is 1938 and that’s how these things work.

She wishes it was as easy as that.

Wishes she could sign a piece of paper and become Amy Williams who works in a factory and lives with her husband Rory in the little flat above the barbershop, and be a normal person and an adult human and a responsible citizen and a wife, and nothing more.

It isn’t as simple as that, though. How could it be?

Because when she sleeps, she dreams of star whales and painters and pirates and stars, and when she wakes it fades away all over again, and every morning feels like a new grief. When she wakes she remembers why she can’t ever go back to that again, why she won’t ever hear the sound of ancient engines in her backyard, why she will never again open her door to find her imaginary friend standing in front of her, real and tangible and wanting to go on adventures and  _hers_. 

And it’s killing her, but not as much as it’s killing Rory.

Because Amy is good at this; at making herself be quiet and patient and still, even if she knows there’s no point in waiting any more. She can try, at least, to forget and adapt and live.

But he can see that it’s an effort for her; and he knows she’s doing it in some part for his sake; that however long they will have together, it won’t ever be enough to make the hurt fade for good.

—

And it hurts more than he thought it would, giving her up.

He thought he was unselfish; thought he could do this one thing; thought he would be able to only see that he was making her happy.

He was wrong.

And it takes a long time for them both to get there.

And it hurts for every second of it; in the phases where they cling to each other, where they make it work, where they are happy, the pain of ending fades a little…

And then Amy slips and sets a third place at the table on Christmas Day. And then Rory slips and brings something up again that he thought he had long buried, something vile and hurtful and cruel, and Amy gives as good as she gets, and everything they have built crumbles once more.

And they can only rebuild from the ashes so many times before nothing is left.

—

Amy Pond finds him in words, as she thinks the Doctor always knew she would. 

Her books are published and read and shared on such a small scale that no one takes too much notice; she lives on her magazine articles, and survives through her stories. Stories of magic, of space, of bravery and strength and wonder, of the heroes who save worlds and histories and each other, over and over again.

She doesn’t dare make it one story; doesn’t dare make the central girl too much like herself. So there are different books, different stories, girls with different names who come from different towns and different times and go on different adventures…And it’s all her. And every time she writes a memory into the next adventure, she feels herself drawing back together. Healing. Reknitting herself into who she once was, who she wants to be again.

She is quietly successful. The reviews are positive and encouraging, but few and far between; and although she half-toyed with the fantasy of _reinventing the adventure story for girls_ , she knows she is at least 50 years too early for that sort of market; what she is, is the unknown and anonymous author behind some children’s novels that arrive in classrooms and libraries and bookshops in the years after the war.

Still. Every now and then, a letter arrives that makes it all worth it, forwarded from her publisher’s office. A little girl or boy who wants to tell her that they loved her stories, that the stories helped in some way, that they found something in her words that spoke of trust and hope and wonder and adventure and love.

The most heartbreaking letters are the ones that arrive from England; because it is in those that she finds the most personal stories. Children who were sent away because of the war, children who came home to the cities and found that their home, their parents, their lives, had disappeared; children who were alone and had never quite understood why.

And she’s happy. She lives on her own in a small flat with a view of Central Park, and she writes her magazine articles that pay the bills, and her stories when she has time, and she lives quietly and solitarily and — happily. It’s real life, but it’s hers, not anyone else’s.

She thinks she can live with this reality.

—

And then, suddenly, everything falls into place.

The trip to England happens on a whim, with less than a moment’s notice, after her publisher has a telephone conversation with his sister’s husband’s client who writes books for a London firm that wants to get the rights to some new children’s novels. 

There’s a press release sent to the Times; and Amy poses with her books, careful to let her hair and the light and the angle obscure enough of her face that the Doctor could never be tempted to come looking for her. Enough paradoxes already. Enough fresh pain. The life she has now is fragile, she knows that.

It’s as she’s leaving the newspaper’s offices that Amy remembers the cutting they found one day. It was half term, and raining, and Aunt Sharon was at work; and so she and Mels and Rory went to the libaray, to look through old newspapers on the special viewing machine that Miss Stiles showed them how to operate, and _— Amelia, look, there’s someone called Amy Pond! — I wonder who she was — that’s more than fifty years ago now — I wonder what happened to her._

The cutting was soon forgotten, because Rory found a story about a man who had murdered three people and hidden their bodies in his garden shed, and that’s a much better story than some old writer lady who has a funny name, and they never bothered finding out who she had been…

Except.

_Except Mels liked taking things, little things, things that made her laugh or think or wonder, and she kept them in a box under her bed; and she took the cutting and folded it away in her pocket and Rory had rolled his eyes at her and Amelia had frowned but not tried to say anything —_

— and Amy is remembering all this in a moment, in a heartbeat, in a rush of realization  as she leaves the offices and stares across the street at an old blue police box —

— and the door is shut, but the key is on a chain around her neck, and it’s in her hand already as she runs, and then the lock is turning and the door is opening with an age-old familiar creak, and and and —

And then his arms are around her, and then they’re gone again, because his hands are clutching her cheeks and his lips are pressed to her forehead, and then he’s pitching forwards again, his face falling against the crook of her neck, and she knows she’s crying but he is too, and words and explanations and questions — _and the story of how Mels’s box of scrap cuttings ended up pasted in River’s diary, because of course she knew, eventually, and of course she planned, even for this; she’s a good girl, is Melody_  — all the conversations can wait.

Right now, Amy Pond is back in the TARDIS; anywhere and everywhere are at her fingertips; and she can’t start soon enough.

—

Somewhere along the way, they go from hugging to holding hands to sleeping curled up around each other. They start slowly, and never act in any more tangible way than this; because each of them know how easily all this could shatter. They don’t dare make it real; but they both know that they both would, given half a chance.

So there are no conversations about love, or relationships, or desires. There are no kisses, excepting those on the forehead or the cheek, those that have always been theirs. They never sleep together, except in the most innocent sense of the phrase; they live on the edge of _friendship,_ and maybe it would hurt if it weren’t for the fact that they both know exactly what this is and how the other feels and why this has to be all there is.

—

And maybe Amelia Pond has been erased and rewritten one too many times; or maybe concieving and bearing a daughter who is all-but-Time-Lady has made more of an impact than anyone guessed; or maybe it’s simply because she has always been different, been more than a time traveller, she’s the girl who grew up with time and space and the void pouring in through a crack in her bedroom wall

Whatever the reasons, whatever the explanations — and the Doctor considers them all — she thinks she never ages more than a year in every ten she lives.

She’s growing old, yes; there are lines around her eyes that weren’t there a hundred years ago, and there is a stiffness in her back after the second century; but that’s all right. They slow down, just enough for her to still keep running with him. And though they hold each other with the heavy weight of potential and missed chances, and though he looks at her with an almost angry sense of pre-imagined loss when she stops for breath sometimes, it’s the closest thing to perfect that could ever exist for the two of them.

—

When they return to Earth, it’s nearly 250 years later, and nearly 50 years since she left; the year is 1989.

The Doctor drops her off at Heathrow Airport, and she gets a ticket from the last-minute counter.

They are being as careful as they possibly can about this, they can’t cheat in any way; no psychic paper, no sonic screwdriver, no perception filter. He can’t come with her, doesn’t dare.

Besides, this visit is something she knows is hers to make, and hers alone.

—

She approaches the bed at the end of the empty ward with something like terror bubbling like acid in her stomach. Her hands are shaking; her throat is dry.

“Amy?”

_oh god he’s old he’s old he’s dying I left him oh my god oh god_

“…Hello. Hello, Rory.”

His face — papery and leathery and wrinkled and sunken as it is — breaks into a smile of pure happiness. “Amy. You found a way out.”

“I — I did,” she half-hiccups, sitting down — almost collapsing — in the chair by his bed. “I’m. So sorry, Rory.”

“Don’t be,” he tells her, quickly. “I knew you would. The Angels were coming for me; you, they could let go. And…And I knew you couldn’t stay. I didn’t want you to stay, not when you weren’t…you anymore.”

He’s the best thing she was ever given; the one thing she knows without a shadow of a doubt she never deserved.

“Thank you,” she whispers, her voice shaking slightly; it’s been centuries for her, but his hand fits in hers with an echo of a life shared and a love lost and the familiarity of all that they had. “Thank you.”

—

They talk for what feels like minutes but could be days; he shows her pictures of his grandchildren, his children, his wife.

“Her name was Amy, too.”

“Amelia Williams,” she realises, and he laughs softly, his voice a whisper of what it was but still strong and good and  _Rory_.

“Amelia Williams,” he nods. “You would have liked her, Amy Pond.”

“I know I would have. You always had good taste.”

He laughs at that, and even though it’s terrifying to see how the laughter wracks his body, Amy laughs too. It’s happy and sad and strange and wonderful and terrible all at once; it’s them, at its heart and its core.

He tells her his stories, and she tells him hers. 

And then visiting hours are over; have been over for over an hour now; and even though he wants her to stay, he keeps dropping off at the end of his sentences; and even though she wants to stay, she knows she can’t spend the night in this city, this time, this reality; knows that she’s already stretching the paradox almost to breaking point.

“Tell Melody I love her,” he tells her, before she goes.

“I will.”

“And —” There is not even the slightest hint of hesitation, not an more. “And give the Doctor my love.”

“I will.”

“Tell him thank you. For everything, for…Venice, and the Silurians, and Stonehenge, and — spaceships and stars and palents. Dinosaurs. Queens. Wedding feasts. The Savoy. And New York. And you, and us.”

“Yeah,” and she’s crying now, now that the end, the ending to this one story, is so close.

“And — look after yourself, Amy. I know you’ve got him. I know you know what you’re doing. But just…be careful.”

“Yeah,” she nods, through her tears. “Yeah, I will be.”

—

And she is.

They go months without any complications or dangerous side-trips at all; they just drift from holiday planet to ancient temple to famous gallery to star cruise, until Amy stops wanting to cry and the Doctor learns how to comfort her again.

It takes a long time, though.

Besides, she thinks she must be nearly 60 now; kept young and fit, sure, but ageing nonetheless.

And she thinks, she’s glad it’s happening like this. Slowly, as it should. Gradually, as it should. Naturally, as it should.

And here, in the TARDIS, with the Doctor; where she should be.

—

And this time, they can take the time they need to say goodbye.

They take years; decades; another century passes, then another; until the day comes when Amy, quietly and decidedly and without asking the Doctor for permission, flies them to a small, sparsely populated, outcrop of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. Close enough to what she once knew, but not too close.

They find a cottage on a cliff overlooking the coast, a little out of the way of too many curious passersby, close enough to the city and the galleries and the parks to keep them occupied; and half an hour away from the hospital — just in case of  _what,_ neither of them has the strength to verbalise.

And she grows vegetables in the garden, and he picks them for her. She cooks, he washes up. She reads her way through his collection of what feels like Every Book Ever, and he reads the copies of her novels that he made her let him buy. 

Their life becomes one of sitting by the fireside, of sipping tea, of watching the sun go down and finding the infinity beauty in the smallest of things. 

Not that they ever completely stop; every now and then, he’ll persuade her to one more trip, and they go see a Shakespeare tragedy performed in the Globe Theatre, or they pop in on Liz Ten for her Sapphire Jubilee, or they take a tour of the Gardens of New Sk’llot.

Or sometimes the Doctor, because he’s the Doctor, gets itchy; and he goes on one quick jaunt. And he always comes back — minutes, days, weeks later, months maybe, but he always does, and what are months, now, to her?

He brings her back something interesting, sometimes; a sabre-tooth tiger’s paw print, etched in clay; a cutting from the last tree on Earth; a new book to read; a new kind of tea.

Sometimes, he brings River home to see her.

Those days are the best, but they are also strangely difficult to get through without crying, because each could be the last, and because she knows they are married she knows that it’s real and good and right, somehow, but — but River is Melody, and Melody is her daughter, and the Doctor is…the Doctor. And Amy just — can’t quite — it’s not something she can put into words, not even to herself, but it’s strange and difficult and sad.

—

Even that dissipates after a while, though.

River’s visits become more frequent, until one day she moves into the living room and sleeps on the sofa. The Doctor’s trips become rarer and rarer, and eventually he stops leaving, even for a day.

Amy knows why.

Of course she knows why.

—

The end comes slowly, but it comes; the story of Amelia Pond, long and fantastical and complicated as its been been, has to draw to a close; but Amy knows she couldn’t have asked for a better ending.


End file.
